Sunday, October 2, 2011

Healthy Eating

As athletes we know the value of a healthy lifestyle with nutritious meals. Everyday we focus on getting the vital nutrients that help us reach the height of our potential and prevent us from getting sick. Our diets are filled with a variety of color and a variety of flavors. Thankfully Brian and I live less then a mile from the Minneapolis Farmer's market. We visited the market on our OFF morning gathering lots of fruits and vegetables that would feed us for the following two weeks at home in Minneapolis.

This is what the Farmer's market looks like on a Monday morning. Saturday is the main day for the market and it is packed! Brian and I enjoyed the slower pace of the morning crowd and took our time sampling the delicious offerings.

We see our neighborhood kids almost everyday, either at the park, or at our front door. While we have been encouraging them to become active we have noticed that they soak up everything we tell them like sponges. So we decided that feeding them Popsicles and gummy bears might not get the entire message across. Of course popsicles and gummy bears are delicious but they weren't very nutritious. So I decided it was time to offer them healthier options with their activities. Brian and I had two huge boxes of apples and oranges that were donated to us after the North Shore In-line and Rollerski Marathon. The kids were psyched to see all the fruit and stopped by just to get a piece of fruit some days!!!

I managed to get a few pounds of ground elk from a supplier that was going out of business and decided to make chili with some of it. Gerry, Javaree and Quinn were thrilled to sit down to a nice chili dinner with Brian and I until I accidentally put too much cayenne pepper in the pot. Despite the cayenne pepper and the tons of beans and veggies with the Elk meat, the boys ate their dinner and laughed and smiled at the dinner table. We were all sweating by the time we finished.